The brands that we compared were Bud Light and Miller Lite. When looking at both brands through social media our group paid close attention to the level of buzz that was produced through social media, sentiment and how positive and negative the posts were, associated words that were produced with the brand, and message reach through the brands.

We focused on three social media tools which were Social Mention, Twendz, and Google Insights. When looking at Social Mention both brand had similar results however for Bud Light mentions were more frequent with a higher passion and reach. There were more positive and neutral posts about Bud Light. However, with this the negative comments were minimal but substantial. When people posted negative comments about Bud Light it was clear that it was negative and could not be mistaken for neutral. When looking at Miller Lite, its sentiment was not as strong as Bud Light’s it was 1:1 and had more negative posts with less frequent posts being posted about them. Their strength and reach of posts was also less than Bud Light. However, when looking at Miller Lite’s post there positive/neutral posts were very positive and neutral. They had a lot of customer engagement, with things such as a Miller Lite Christmas tree. When looking at their negative posts they were not really negative just had “bad” words in them. Twendz gave similar results at Social Mention  it. When looking at Twendz the frequency of negative positive was far more for Bud Light then Miller Lite. The last Social Media tool that we used was Google Insights. This allowed us to see where people were searching for the products and what words they were searching for. For Bud Light which is brewed in St. Louis that is where it had the most regional interest, which was not surprising. For Miller Lite, where it is brewed in Milwaukee was where it had the most regional interest. What was interesting for Miller Lite was that St. Louis also ranked on their top 10 for regional interest. This is a down fall for Bud Light. The search words that were used for Bud Light and Miller Lite were not surprising. Bud Light has bud light cruise which was a popular event that they had during the summer, and Miller Lite had vortex which they advertise heavily.  I thought it was interesting that Miller Lite also had jobs; people must really like their product and company if they are searching for jobs. As well as miller girls, their promotional team is doing a better job that Bud Light.

Then deciding on which brand fared better it was not a difficult chose. Miller Lite won by far. For Social Mention, they also had the same amount of posts and their negatives were not negative at all rather positives, and they are able to reach a large amount of people as shown in Google Insights. Not only are Miller customers interested in the product it goes farther than that they take the brand to heart and make Christmas trees with the product, recognize their commercials, and are even interested in becoming an employee in their company.

For Bud Light to become more competitive they should embody more social media prescience. They should comment on negative posts and prove that it is wrong. They should also have contest and sweepstakes, which was popular for Miller Lite.

This project was good because it allowed our group that ability to look at different aspect of social media and just not twitter or facebook. We were able to trace exactly what was being said, when it was being said, and by who. This is vital because you can reward key customers and help change views on people who do not see you brand in a positive light. These tools could also help marketing in the future. If these beers were being searched in different countries Miller Lite, and Bud Light could come with campaigns to expand into these markets. Social media gives good insights on who is your customer, who do consumers feel about your brand, and if expanding and advertisements in different locations are a good idea, as well as if commercials/promotions are working.

The brand that I choose to examine further through their Facebook page was Diet Coke. On Diet Coke’s wall they allow consumer to comment about Diet Coke.  If they wanted to make a more interactive experience Diet Coke should take a more proactive approach on the wall. I only saw one posting from them and they did not comment on any consumer’s post that included questions or even praises about how much they enjoy coke. Diet coke does not do a very good job of demonstrating consumer motivations. Under their home tab they have a section to ask questions and view product line, which fulfils connect. However, create, control, and complete are nowhere to be found. The only metric that can be used from this site were viewing how many people like their facebook page and if these people ask questions.

There are a lot of suggestions that I have for this page. When we had our speaker from restaurant.com he discussed how they have a coke rewards program. There is no reason as to why I should not see this on diet coke’s facebook page. They should include this and the benefits you can have from this program. Diet Coke should also answer their questions and provide feedback. Nowhere did I find that they ever address their consumers. Why have a facebook if you are not going to be interactive? The one thing that I liked was when Diet Coke asked about Thanksgiving and said are you bringing us? I liked this post because consumers can answer their question, however I think it would have been benefit to have a competition that revolved around Diet Coke and Thanksgiving. They could have had a contest to see who demonstrated the best use of diet coke during Thanksgiving and the winner would win coke reward points or diet coke. With over a million people liking Diet Coke they have access to a decent about of people. They should also encourage people to “Like” their facebook page through their advertisements or use a QR code on diet packages. Under events, they have no events posted and none in their history. This would be a good spot to host a competition so all the people that liked their page would be aware of it. Diet Coke does a good job of positing videos but like photos they should allow consumer to post videos and once again this could be an interactive competitive experience. I do like how Diet Coke had a Diet Coke Halloween Album. I thought this was creative in showing people that enjoy diet coke and taking their brand to the next step. On their facebook page it also directs consumers to the Coke page, people that like Diet Coke want to focus on Diet Coke not Coke, they should reevaluate their Facebook page and start targeting Diet Coke users and not redirecting them. I know that Diet Coke does a lot for heart disease for women, however I did not see this anywhere on their page. I think it would be smart to tie this in with their page because they advertise this in commercials and on their cans.

I think that online privacy is a major issue. Before reading this article and talking about this in class I was unaware of the tactics that were used in gathering information about prospects and consumers. Almost all information that is placed online it up for grabs. Although consumers should be more careful with placing information on the Internet, I do not think that it is ok that there isn’t enough information on these issues available to the public. This article showed to me how easy it is for companies to get personal information; even having a shopping cart can gain companies access to information that can be sold. It is also interesting that when you search for things they gather that information and come up with how they believe you are. An example from the article was how a person that was using Yahoo and was 17 at the time did research on weight loss, and she was actually over weight. If information like this was sold to insurance companies, they may charge higher insurance rates. Opposite to that, if a person’s Dad has cancer and they were looking for information insurance companies may believe that these consumers has cancer and may charge her wrongly.

I do believe that consumers need protection.  I found it shocking that third parties such as dictionary.com get visitors information and sell it to other companies. It is also shocking from the article that information can be sold for tenth of a penny. With cookies being downloaded to people’s computer are we naive to think that personal information such as social security numbers, passwords, and credit card information is not being stored.

There should be some sort of regulations set for cookies and storing/selling of information to ensure that personal information does not go public or used wrongly by companies. If the government enforces laws like this, marketers would have to disclose that they are using their information. However, I do not always think that this will be an issue. If you take Facebook for example, you have to abide by a set of policies before using. Because of the popularity of the site users are going to agree with this, so it will not always have negative affects. If laws were passed on this, marketers might need to buy consumer information from consumers, this would make marketers job for difficult, however it would be more ethical. If marketers had to buy information maybe they would gain more business because they are taking proper steps to ensure that consumer information is stored, used safety, and sold properly.

When looking at Google Analytics for my Internet Marketing 370 blog the amount of visits I have had since I started my blog were 75 visits.  Which came to roughly one visit per day.  There were certain days were visits to my blog were much higher than other days these days were Wednesday, September 21^st where I had 5 visits to my site which accounted for 6.85 % of my total visits, Wednesday, October 12^th where I had 7 visits which accounted for 9.59% of my total visits, and Wednesday October 19^th were I had 5 visits that accounted for 6.85% of my total visits. The amount of unique visits to my site were 25, this means that out of the 75 visits that my blog had experienced only 25 of them have not been repeat users. These unique visits mostly visited my blog site on Wednesdays.

When looking at page views from my visitors. I had a total of 227 page views throughout the semester. The date that had the most outstanding page views was Wednesday, August 31t where I had 64 page views which accounted for 28.19% of my entire page views. The average time that people spend on my blog site are around 6 minutes. And my average bounce rate is 55%, meaning that 55% of people that viewed my blog left right away. Having a high bounce rate is not good because viewers do not like what your site has or does not relate to their interests. This is important to change so that viewers and potential customers stay intrigued with your site and then if you are selling something will buy it.

My visitor locations consist of 73 visits from the United States and one visit from Israel.  The visits that were from the United States were all located from Illinois and when breaking it down further 66 visits were from DeKalb, while 2 visits were from Somonauk, 3 visits from Naperville, and 1 visit from Mokena. This is important information for marketers because they can better target their marketing techniques.

The tops sites that were viewed from my blog were my general pages where everyone that clicks onto my site will see. This has 134 page views and 72 unique page views with around 5 minutes spend on it. My about me section was the next top viewed site with 32 page views, 17 unique page visits and 1 minute spend on the page. The third most popular page was my contact information, with 26 page views, 7 unique page views and 45 seconds spend on this page. This is important because it shows you what page your customers look at the most, how much time they spend on the site, and if there is a high bounce rate. If you have a landing page, that has a high bounce rate you would want to reconsider having this as a landing page because it is not relating to your ad or consumers needs.

The top traffic for my site is direct traffic with 55.41%, while referring sites is close behind with 39.19% and search engines with 4.05%. What I found interesting was the referral results from this information. Laurenlabrecque.com referral resulted in 9 visits and accounted for 12.16% of my visits and LinkedIn, which I recently added my site to has 1 visit. Although this is not a lot it has proven that people will used my LinkedIn to view my site. The two top keywords from the report where jen Johnsen niu with 2 visits and jessalyn murray with 1 visit.

Additional information that I found interesting was included in the browser information. Chrome accounted for 45.95% of searches, Firefox accounted for 25.68&, Internet explorer was 22.97%, and Safari 5.41%. I just found this interesting because I am the only person that I know that uses Chrome.

Ralph de la Vega is the President & CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. What I learned from Ralph is that you need to welcome obstacles because you are always going to experience them. Ralph was born in 1950 in Cuba. When the revolution started to come in Cuba, Ralph’s family made the hard decision to ship him over to the United States without them. For four years he stayed with a family friend and had to learn how to grow and develop without his parents and sister.  In high school when Ralph had dream of becoming an engineer and was told that he would never be able to make it from his high school counselor, he confided in his grandmother that told him he could be whatever he wanted to be and not to ever let anyone put limitations on your dreams or goals.

These stories stuck out especially to me because Ralph taught me that even if people doubt you, as long as you believe in yourself, and as long as you try hard in everything you do that you can prevail.

While Ralph was working in Miami in 1992, he was always one to plan for problems. He gave his workers the information that if there ever was a hurricane the plan that they needed to follow. When hurricane Andrew came around, other companies in Miami did not believe that it would hit their companies. However, Ralph stuck to the plan even though it was uncertain of what would happen. The Hurricane ended up hitting the companies in Miami and Ralph’s was one of the few to be prepared for it. The main goal that was learned from this was that sometimes you might have to alter your plans to fit your goals. Remaining open to new ideas is extremely important.

Ralph’s pillars for success included to dream big & believe in yourself, developing a winning game plan. take risks, overcome obstacles, and recognize opportunities. I took these to heart when I heard them because they are all things for the most part that you can impact. My parents have always told me that I can do whatever I put my mind to and this is very much what Ralph is also speaking about.

Customized Fortune Cookies
www.fancyfortunecookies.com
Unique Fortune Cookies, Shop Now!

 
I picked my ad choice because the word customized is not something you hear every day when you think of a fortune cookie. My target demographic would be parents with children. This is because they would most likely buy these cookies for their children for holidays or various events throughout the year.

My call to action is shop now to encourage consumers to look through their website, and my landing page is the page on the fortune cookie website where it talks about personalized fortune cookies because it directly relates to being customized for the consumer.

Three relevant keywords are personalized fortune cookies, giant fortune cookie, and custom fortune cookie.  The keyword that I choose was custom fortune cookies. There is a high level of competition with 12,100 global monthly searches and 9,900 local monthly searches. The two-keyword ideas I choose were fortune cookie, and fortune cookie messages. I choose fortune cookie because it had a medium competition level and a very high amount of global and local monthly searches.  By choosing this keyword I would expose the company to more people and could increase my sales because of this. The other keyword I choose was fortune cookie messages because it has a low level of competition this would allow me to get a cheaper price and better position in the ads.

The average CPC for “custom fortune cookie” was $0.75, estimated average daily clicks was 30 and estimated daily cost is $22.71.

For extra credit I attended the speaker, Melvin Flowers VP Internal Audit for Microsoft Corporation. Melvin started off his presentation on talking about his company and that their mission is to help people and businesses throughout the world so they can realize their full potential. With over 640,000 partners and 89,000 employees in 110 locations it is difficult at times to always remain ethical.  Melvin expressed how at times were his co-workers were acting unethical by reporting more money that was spend on business trips, Melvin remained true to himself and his company.

The values of the Microsoft Corporation are integrity & honesty, open & respectful, self-critical, accountable, big challenge, and passion. Melvin discussed how he not only takes these values to heart but he lives by them and posted them in his office as a reminder. When employees do not abide by these guidelines they are not acting ethically in Melvin’s mind.

Melvin has had various positions before becoming the VP Internal Audit for Microsoft Corporation. He came from a family that was not well off and created something for himself and his name.  He has had to face many decisions that has made him the person he is today. He has had to deal with gift vs bribery, insider transaction, layoffs, and advanced checks. What has motivated Melvin to success and do the right thing is that he has always wanted to be a proper role model and has had a fear of failure.

What I learned from Melvin is that it is important to stay true to yourself and not cave under pressure. Most times people know what they are doing is wrong or that other individuals are doing in wrong and by not standing up you are guilty for yourself. (Like when he left his position due to insider transactions) Melvin was also inspiration because he never gave up, when people questioned him he pushed himself more.  I think that is important before you go into a job to know what motivates you and always remind yourself of that. Melvin also gave some pointers on how to remain ethical. Geed vs Fear, What vs How, and Secret vs Transparent. When making decisions they should always somewhat fall in the middle of these three groups of words. He believes that when this is done ethical decisions will be made.

SEO,or search engine optimization, is what drives traffic to a website. It is important because the more unique a company’s website and words are the more likely Google will pick their website up and place them in a good location for when people are searching for their site. In class we used the example of a coffee place. When running an SEO search it would be important to have coffee and chocolate come up for SEO. SEO is so important because without it sites would not “exist”, therefore they would not have consumer awareness, and produce profits.

When using Google Ranking the tops words that were found on my website were market, company, arch, restaurant, and Johnsen. Market, company, restaurant and Johnsen did not surprise me. I have referenced these words in a lot of my blog posts. However, I am not sure why arch was a top word in my Google Ranking search.

When looking for an IT job through McDonald’s website it took me four clicks before I reached the job description on the Associate Platform Support Analyst position and three clicks before I reached the page on IT relevant job openings. The information on jobs at McDonalds was easy to navigate and find.

I thought it was easy to find the information on careers. This website did a good job of breaking corporate opportunities, restaurant opportunities, and internship into three categories. Although when it had listed corporate opportunities, I think it would have been easier to be able to click on that text (picture) and then be directed to the next page. It was nice to have the category drop down when searching for the IT jobs. No extensive searching had to be done to find what category you were interested in, and was very user friendly. The employee benefits were also easy to navigate because they were visible to the left of the screen after you started searching for jobs. I think it would have also been benetifal to have employee benefits listed after the job descriptions, for better understanding.

This website is not compelling to me. There is a lot of white space and non-engaging photographs. I think that if the career section would have more of a style like NIU College of Business’ website it be more engaging.  This website does not make me want to work for McDonalds because it does not show a fun and engaging environment. I would be more inclined to work for McDonalds if it offered more colors, not just McDonald’s traditional colors.

The navigation of the McDonald’s website, I thought was well organized.  When you clicked on the prospective career categories it brought me to just that. When I clicked on the benefits it brought me to the main benefits and then broke it down for me.  The layout of the pages however had a lot of white space (background of the pages) and there is no apparent structure that catches my eye. However, when I clicked on the restaurant opportunities it brought me to a page that really stood out to me. It had a new shape and design then the previous pages and had an engaging background on employees in a work setting. The colors where basically McDonalds colors with white, while the restaurant opportunities still maintained the McDonald’s color but was able to encoporate other colors in an eye catching way. The use of images were horrible on this website. Not only were the pictures boring they did not capture a lively McDonald’s culture. The arch in the background of one picture is hard to see. And I was wondering if these photos are actual employees or just pictures of business people. There were no videos to view that I believe really would have added a something extra to the page. Overall the ease of the website it great because it is basic, but that is all it is, basic. There is nothing exciting or special on this website because the fact that it is easy to navagiate your way around.

For McDonald’s to improve the experience of this site I would suggest adding more colors to the site. The use of photos as background images would be a good example of this. It addition to this there should be more of a navigation bar, not a bar to the left and one below listing the career opportunities. The use of relevant photographs would incite viewers and make it able to place viewers in their shoes.  I also think that it would be a good idea to have a video of employees working or discussing their experience at McDonalds.

For the Kraft Food Company it took be about six clicks to search for jobs in an IT related field.  However, after doing this it said that there were no jobs found. This process took far too much longer than the McDonald’s process. On the main page it is confusing because should I click on “find a job with us” or “career contacts”. You then had to click on United States, which I think should have been placed at a later time in the search.  Then you get to the screen where you have to decide on professional positions or hourly. I think they could have worded this differently as well. I have searched for jobs before where I had to come to a site much like the Job Search that Kraft Foods has. This job search is extremely discouraging and makes me believe that they do not care about their employees because they have to general job search engine.  McDonald’s site may not be as graphically appealing as Kraft’s however it was a much easier process to find a job. This would make me want to work more for McDonald’s then Kraft.